Road Tripping: Acadia National Park, Part 1

This year for our family vacation, we packed up the van and drove up to Acadia National Park in Maine for about a week, during which it rained almost every day. It was great.

The first full day we were there, it was pouring buckets when we woke up. This is different from pouring cats and dogs, because there were no animals falling from the sky, and is also different from raining sheets, because there was no bed linen landing on us. Anyway, since it was so wet and we were tent camping, not parked at a campsite in an RV, we elected to drive into Ellsworth for breakfast. After a high-class meal, we did some luxury shopping. Yes, we went to McDonald’s and Wal-Mart. And not just any Wal-Mart. This was a Wal-Mart supercenter.

We spent the rest of the morning doing some shopping, had a late lunch at a Thai restaurant, then drove into Acadia. It was a great beach day.

As long as you weren't planning on swimming, lying in the sun, or gazing out at the ocean views.

It really was a good day to visit Thunder Hole, due to the combination of the incoming tide and relatively high surf. The way Thunder Hole works is that there’s a narrow channel of rock that ends in a hollow rock chamber. When water runs down this channel fast enough, it crashes into the hollow chamber, making, in theory, a loud thundering sound accompanied by lots of water flying everywhere. In reality, when we've been before, even with the tide coming in, Thunder Hole gurgles and splashes. This time, there was actual thundering, albeit somewhat quiet thundering.

The next day, we took the morning to dry out and move our campsite after another damp night. In the afternoon, we went back into the park to do a quick hike up Day Mountain followed by a walk around Eagle Lake. We hadn't done either of these hikes before, but last time we were at Acadia, we picked up a fairly comprehensive trail book. It’s a nice resource because it not only describes (almost?) all of the hikes at Acadia, but also gives distances to landmarks and trail intersections and a height profile which shows where the steepest parts of the trail are located.

It allowed us to find some lesser known hikes, such as the Day Mountain and Eagle Lake trails. We ended up only doing the beginning of the Day Mountain trail, but got some decent views for a short hike. After driving further down the Park Loop Road (more on that later), we walked to the trailhead of the Eagle Lake trail. We started on the east side of the lake, where the trail follows the shoreline of Eagle Lake closely. That’s where you get the best views of the lake.

That’s also where there’s the most mud, because you’re so close to the shoreline. I enjoyed it thoroughly, mud puddles and all. Especially mud puddles and all.

Starting out, we knew it was already kind of late in the afternoon, so the plan was to hike out on the trail for awhile, then turn back and retrace our steps. Which we would have done even if we went to the end of the trail, but this way we could decide how long we wanted the hike to be. We ended up rounding the southern end of the lake, then walking a little bit up the western shore. At this point, the trail moved further inland, so we turned back and made our way back to the campground for a dinner-snack.

Still to come: more rain, more hiking, more fun, and even more rain. Don’t go away; we’ll be right back after these messages.